Built in the 1920s and remodelled as an architectural showcase in the 1930s, Berlin Tempelhof Airport was once among the world's twenty largest buildings. Officially closed in 2008, the colossal structure still remains a place of arrivals and departures. Today its massive hangars are used as one of Germany’s largest emergency shelters for asylum seekers, like 18-year-old Syrian student Ibrahim and Iraqi physiotherapist Qutaiba. We follow them as they adjust to a transitory daily life of social services interviews, German lessons and medical exams, all the time struggling to cope with homesickness and the anxiety of whether they will gain residency or be deported.

Director Karim Aïnouz gracefully combines the large architectural forms of the airport with a profound sensitivity to the intimate moments of the refugees who live there. Throughout the film, he cuts to local Germans using the park along the airport’s perimeter. We see everything from kids on Segways to joggers skirting the fence, continually reminding us of the “normal” life that awaits just outside the omnipresent barrier.